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'Torture chief a South African'
11/07/2008 07:11 - (SA)
Julian Rademeyer, Beeld
Johannesburg - A senior Zanu-PF politburo official implicated in torture, kidnapping and a secret plan to harass and drive out opposition supporters in Zimbabwe is a South African citizen.
This is despite the fact that dual citizenship is outlawed by the Zimbabwean constitution.
Joshua Teke Malinga, 64, a former senator and mayor of Bulawayo, is a member of President Robert Mugabe's inner circle, and has been accused of establishing a "torture centre" near the Bulawayo central police station.
He also is accused of being one of the authors of a document setting out "covert operations to decompose (sic) the opposition" during recent presidential run-off elections.
'Dirty tricks' operations
The "action plan" drafted by senior members of Zanu-PF in Midlands province, called for supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change to be harassed and driven out of Zanu-PF strongholds.
Other dirty tricks operations included declaring "no-go areas" for the MDC in rural parts of the country, and writing threatening letters to "resettled" farmers purporting to come from the MDC and "harassing" them in MDC T-shirts so that they voted to defend their land.
South Africa, however, would have no jurisdiction to act against Malinga - who, like dozens of other senior Zanu-PF officials, has business ties to South Africa and owns property here - for crimes committed in Zimbabwe.
The wheelchair-bound Malinga, who owns three sectional-title units in Hillbrow, was until recently a director of the Secretariat of the African Decade of Persons with Disabilities (SADPD), a Cape town-based organisation that champions the rights of the disabled in Africa.
After queries from Beeld, however, the organisation announced that Malinga had been booted off the board.
South African by birth
SADPD's chief executive officer Kudakwashe Dube said the organisation "dissociated" itself from Malinga's political activities and condemned "in the strongest possible manner the violence that is prevailing in Zimbabwe".
He said the present board was "in the process of being replaced". Malinga had served with the secretariat since 2004.
Dube said: "We condemn the implementation of a discredited run-off 'election' and the harsh economic and political conditions that disabled people are experiencing."
He said the organisation did not have programmes running in Zimbabwe because of the "unstable and unacceptable" political situation there.
The Department of Home Affairs has confirmed that Malinga, who is on international sanctions lists in much of Europe, the United States and Australia, is a South African citizen by birth and is listed on the Population Register.
Detained at airport
"The department does not require citizens to disclose their occupations so the department would have no record that Mr Malinga was a politician in Zimbabwe," said spokesperson Siobhan McCarthy.
In 2002, Malinga and his wife were detained after they tried to board a flight to New York at Gatwick Airport in the United Kingdom.
They were subsequently deported for violating European Union sanctions banning top Zanu-PF officials from travel abroad.
Malinga claimed the deportation order was a "violation of my human rights as a disabled person".
In March this year, SW Radio Africa - which broadcasts to Zimbabwe from London - reported that Malinga "is thought to have sanctioned two separate abductions of MDC activists".
'Supplying drugs daily'
Last month, The Zimbabwean newspaper, reported that Malinga had established a "torture centre" in Bulawayo. According to the report, "several MDC members have been kidnapped and taken there to be tortured".
"Malinga is understood to be supplying the youth militias with opaque beer (masese) and drugs on a daily basis."
Malinga denied the charges saying the "centre" was merely a "temporary" Zanu-PF office.
After last month's one-man election, Malinga was quoted as saying that "nobody on this earth" could stop Mugabe.
Malinga did not respond to e-mail questions sent to him by Beeld.
- Beeld
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